Contest for Conyers' old seat highlights need for open primary

U.S. Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) speaks a news conference on Capitol Hill, January 16, 2014 in Washington, DC. A group of lawmakers announced that they are introducing legislation, the Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2014, that would restore keys parts of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.(Photo: Drew Angerer, Getty Images)

Even if every voter who chose someone else in the primary coalesced around the second-place finisher, Coleman Young Jr., I pointed out, Young would finish in a distant second place.

My prediction, it turned out, was far too cautious: In November's one-on-one match-up with Young, Duggan captured an even larger share of the vote — 72% — than the 67% he'd garnered in the eight-way mayoral primary.

Even so, many Detroit residents reacted as though I'd proposed the repeal of the 14th Amendment, or the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Why, they demanded to know, should Detroiters allow the handful of residents who participated in the mayoral primary (about 65,000, or fewer than one in every seven registered voters) pick their next mayor, just because Duggan had won that primary by a a lopsided margin?

A larger farce awaits

I understood the sentiment, even if I disagreed with their reasoning: No one wants to give up their right to participate in an election, even if logic dictates that the result is a foregone conclusion.

So I wonder: Why should residents of Detroit (and the 11 Wayne County cities encompassed by Michigan's 13 Congressional District) be any less upset about the prospect that a handful of primary voters will, for all practical purposes, pick Congressman John Conyers' successor?

Six Democrats are seeking their party's nomination for Conyers' old seat in the primary election a week from Tuesday. The size of the field has made it difficult for pollsters to project a winner, but it's highly unlikely that the first place finisher will garner an absolute majority — that is, more than 50% of the votes cast — much less the 67% share Duggan won in his 8-candidate primary brawl a year ago.

In fact, if participation in this year's primary approximates the primary turnout in 2016, when Conyers staved off lone challenger Janice Winfrey by winning 31,000 of the 51,000 votes cast, the victor in a close race could prevail by winning fewer than 9,000 total votes.

And because the 13th is so overwhelmingly blue — Democratic candidates there almost invariably beat their Republican rivals by a margin of three- or four-to-one — even a candidate who wins a hair's-breadth victory in the primary can expect to pummel whichever Republican he or she confronts in November. (Indeed, the disqualification of David Dudenhoefer, the only Republican candidate to file in the 13th, raises the real possibility that no Republican will appear on the November ballot.)

A primary for all comers

There are two ways to address the problem posed by a crowded partisan primary in districts that are stacked prohibitively in favor of one party.

The expensive way to is schedule runoff elections between the top two finishers when no candidate attracts more than 50% of the primary vote.

The simpler, more efficient way is to hold a single, open primary in which candidates affiliated with any parties (or no party) compete in a single contest to pare the field to the top two. California, Louisiana, Nebraska and Washington already employ variations of this system, as Michigan does in non-partisan mayoral and judicial contests.

The hazards in the congressional context are obvious: In districts that lean heavily Democratic or Republican, the minority party (Republicans in the Detroit-centric Michigan 13th, Democrats in the Lake Michigan-hugging Michigan 2nd), risks being shut out of the general election.

But wouldn't any district be better served by a choice between the two candidates with the greatest appeal to all the districts voters, even if the choice is not as stark as the standard red vs. contest?

A November showdown between the top two finishers in the 13th District Democratic primary would certainly be more suspenseful, and attract more voter interest, than a one-sided contest between the Democratic first-place finisher and whatever write-in candidate Republican primary voters choose as their sacrificial lamb.

Surely the larger electorate expected to turn out in November's climactic general election deserves a more meaningful choice than the one that awaits them under the current rules.

Brian Dickerson is the editorial page editor of the Detroit Free Press. Contact him at bdickerson@freepress.com.

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